Birding Group visit to Brockholes 2nd April 2019

The first birding group outing of the month was to Brockholes near Preston, a site we have not been to in quite a while. It was still abit early in the year so we were not sure quite what we would find there. What we did find included some late-staying Fieldfares and the first Sand Martins of the year – a nice combination.

We started out with a cup of tea at the visitor centre which may only have opened for the year quite recently. As we were sitting there we could see a small group of Sand Martins flying overhead, a nice year first and reassuring because we were not over confident of seeing much so early in the year.

We walked down to the sluice where we could see some Sand Martin nests in the banks of the river. Some of the group saw a Kingfisher but all I could see was a lot of Kingfisher coloured bin bag scraps that had been shredded among the low lying tree branches that dipped into the reiver.

One surprise was that we found a group of Fieldfare feeding on the grassy field on the other side of the river – a first for the year as well. We also found a Tree Sparrow in the trees on our side of the river. From the area near the sluice we walked uphill to the path that leads either to the visitor centre or to the right it leads to the woods. We took thae woods route and found the woods to be full of small woodland birds and whilst there was nothing special there were lots of birds flitting around and quite unconcerned about us. Some of the group saw Great Spotted Woodpecker.

As we came out of the woods it was a bit of a different story as the motorway was very loud and there didn’t seem to be much around except a few Reed Buntings. As we walked down the path we did start to see some ducks and a pair of Great Crested Grebe. Although there was nothing special it was still a nice three-mile round trip back to the visior centre and we did get nearly forty species of birds.

Bird Sightings Brockholes 2nd April 2019